Season FOUR OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

00:00: Modern Video - the Enterprise looks properly lit
00:30: Modern Video - kinda ugly, but that's inherent to the footage, as FrontierTrek mentioned
01:40: Modern Video - looks great
01:47: Modern Video - kinda bright, but the lighting is darker and more realistic than the original: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s4/4x10/theloss277.jpg
01:53: Modern Video - lighting is good, the shine is intentional
02:04: Modern Video - heavily backlit, but it's not overly bright
02:07: Modern Video - looks good

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Out of those I only really like the shots at 1:40 and 2:04. All the other ones are far too hesitant in their use of true dark shadows the way CBSD uses them. Space is dark not grey and its this grey shadowing tone that makes the ship look flat and not properly blended with its surrounding.

Also the original lighting has not held CBSD back to massively improve shots with regard to shadowing. Those were the 80s they can do a lot better now.

So, I hear people saying that CBS-D will handle the final "conform" for Season 4. What does that mean exactly? I'm not a restoration specialist so the terms thrown around leave me in the dark quite often.

Would the final conform mean that they do final tweaking to Modern Video's compositions? Tweaks to lighting, matte lines, etc...or is it something less involved than that?

Yeah I'm not seeing the problem at all. If there is a difference in quality, it's incredibly subtle.

Certainly not like HTV's work which stood out like a sore thumb, and where the quality and lighting fluctuated wildy within every episode.

Although as much as I like the 4-footer and some of the cool shots they got out of it, I do agree it doesn't hold up nearly as well in closeups. I was shocked at how ugly and obvious the registry decals were during the BOBW event.

Quick question about the archival mission logs for season 4 to season 7. Will CBS be including the region 2 dvd extra featurettes in the blu ray releases? For example, season 4 has two extra featurettes on my region 2 dvd boxset called "Select Historical Data" & "Inside the Star Trek Archives". Are these being included?

I think we need to get used to upscaled CGI if we are going to get Voyager and DS9 on Blu. We are already getting upscaled stuff on the Enterprise blu-rays.

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Enterprise HD masters were made that way, they didn't change anything for the Blu-rays. TNG, DS9 and VOY need new masters, so they'll recreate anything that isn't HD, including digital effects.

Incidentally, some of the "Space Baby" and its mother was a physical model, some of it was CG. They'll have to rebuild the CG bits, but the model should hold up ok as is.

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I really do not believe they will remake the CGI in 1080p on DS9 and Voyager.

It would be way too expensive to do it and make it way more expensive than TNG which is not a good idea when the spinoffs where not as popular as TNG. I think it would require another company remaking the effects shots in addition to two companies editing them together. Surely this is too expensive. Its not just re-rendering the CGI models (which would have to be remade from scratch!) they have to match the virtual camera movements and positions of ships etc. Imagine trying to remake the fleet scenes in the latter seasons of DS9 - it would cost a fortune! OTOH they can simply upscale. Enterprise already has 480p CGI upscaled and so will DS9 and VOY. Surely the VFX companies sent in their CGI effects in a higher bitrate ready to be edited into their SD broadcasts just incase they are upscaled in the future. Perhaps these reels exist separately to the finished episodes, especially if they were edited into existing live action footage.

It would be way too expensive to do it and make it way more expensive than TNG which is not a good idea when the spinoffs where not as popular as TNG. I think it would require another company remaking the effects shots in addition to two companies editing them together. Surely this is too expensive. Its not just re-rendering the CGI models (which would have to be remade from scratch!) they have to match the virtual camera movements and positions of ships etc. Imagine trying to remake the fleet scenes in the latter seasons of DS9 - it would cost a fortune! OTOH they can simply upscale. Enterprise already has 480p CGI upscaled and so will DS9 and VOY. Surely the VFX companies sent in their CGI effects in a higher bitrate ready to be edited into their SD broadcasts just incase they are upscaled in the future. Perhaps these reels exist separately to the finished episodes, especially if they were edited into existing live action footage.

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A. now you see why CBS has been reluctant to commit to DS9 or VOY

B. You way overestimate the CG that was done at the time. It will need to re-done. Remember the CG at the time was done as low resolution and with as low geometry as possible for 90's standard definition TV. It will look like just terrible when upscaled. You can already see low resolution textures on Voyager if you look.

Both Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz and Doug Drexler have said basically as much at different points in time when asked on their respective blogs.

C. Enterprise was done with much higher resolution initial models, etc. but rendered at 480p for rendering speed given the budgets and weekly schedules. It was eventually rendered at 720p depending on the shots.

According to startrek.com. Redemption is coming out on July 30th. Can we assume this is the date that Season 4 is coming out too? Also, unless Target as another great deal for Season 4 and Redemption (And they might), I'm not sure I'm going to get this single disc. I didn't even decide to get BOBW until yesterday when I saw the ad. I just really wish they wouldn't do this, and now I think we know what the theatrical events are. It's a shame that none of the other Season 4 episodes will be featured. I hope I'm wrong though, but it seems like this is the direction they want to go for the remainder of the series.

According to startrek.com. Redemption is coming out on July 30th. Can we assume this is the date that Season 4 is coming out too? Also, unless Target as another great deal for Season 4 and Redemption (And they might), I'm not sure I'm going to get this single disc. I didn't even decide to get BOBW until yesterday when I saw the ad. I just really wish they wouldn't do this, and now I think we know what the theatrical events are. It's a shame that none of the other Season 4 episodes will be featured. I hope I'm wrong though, but it seems like this is the direction they want to go for the remainder of the series.

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I hope for the season 5 event they go with Unification over Time's Arrow and for season 6 Chains of Command over the craptacular Descent.

Other than 'just because it's the season-spanning two parters' there's no real logical reason to choose Time's Arrow over Unification or Descent over Chains of Command as clearly the latter episodes are far better.